1.
Introduction
This paper is an experiment in both method and substance.
Substantively, I want to show that, in all probability,
there were very few Christians in the Roman world,
at least until the end of the second century. I then
explore the implications of small number, both absolutely,
and as a proportion of the empire's total population.
1
One tentative but
radical conclusion is that Christianity was for a
century after Jesus' death the intellectual property
at any one time of scarcely a few dozen, perhaps rising
to two hundred, literate adult males, dispersed throughout
the Mediterranean basin. A complementary conclusion
(of course, well known in principle, but not often
explored for its implications) is that by far the
greatest growth in Christian numbers took place in
two distinct phases: first, during the third century,
when Christians and their leaders were the victims
of empire-wide and centrally organized persecutions;
and then in the fourth century, after the conversion
of Constantine and the alliance of the church with
the Roman state under successive emperors. The tiny
size of the early church, and the scale and speed
of its later growth each had important implications
for Christianity's character and organization.
My methods are frankly
speculative and exploratory. For the moment, [End
Page 185] I am interested more in competing probabilities,
and in their logical implications, than in established
or establishable facts. That may not be as problematic
as it at first appears. Facts require interpretation.
Only the naive still believe that facts or "evidence"
are the only, or even the most important ingredients
of history. What matters at least as much is who is
writing, or reading the history, with what prejudices
or questions in mind, and how those questions can
best be answered. Facts and evidence provide not the
framework, but the decoration to those answers. 2
One of my main objectives
in this paper is to show how the same "facts,"
differently perceived, generate competing, but complementary
understandings. For example, leading Christians were
highly conscious of their sect's rapid growth, and
understandably proud of their "large numbers."
But many Romans, both leaders and ordinary folk, long
remained ignorant of and unworried by Christians,
probably because of their "objectively"
small numbers and relative social insignificance.
Such differential perceptions often occur, then and
now. Perhaps these discrepancies were all the more
pervasive in a huge and culturally complex empire,
with very slow communications. So, the Roman or religious
historian has the delicate job of understanding and
analyzing these networks of complementary but conflicting
meanings--and at the same time, the exciting task
of finding, inventing, or borrowing best methods for
constructing critical paths through or round our patchy
knowledge of what inevitably remains an alien society.
My first task is to
calculate the size and growth in the number of Christians
during the first four centuries c.e. But before I
do that, a word of caution. The term Christian is
itself more a persuasive than an objective category.
By this, I mean that ancient Christian writers may
often have counted as "Christian" a number
of people who would not have thought of themselves
as Christian, or who would not have taken Christianity
as their primary self-identifier. As I imagine it,
ambiguity of religious identity was particularly pervasive
in a polytheistic society, because polytheists were
accustomed to seek the help of strange gods occasionally,
or in a crisis, or on a wave of fashion. Or put another
way, [End Page 186] it was only in a limited number
of cases or contexts in ancient society that religious
affinity was a critical indicator of cultural identity.
But monotheistic Christians, whether out of hope,
or the delusion of enthusiasm, chose gratefully to
perceive Jewish or pagan interest as indicative of
a commitment, which Christians idealized as exclusive.
It is this exclusivism, idealized or practiced, which
marks Christianity off from most other religious groups
in the ancient world
So ancient Christian
leaders (and modern historians) may have chosen to
consider as Christian a whole range of ambiguous cases,
such as occasional visitors to meetings, pious Jewish
god-fearers who also attended synagogue, or ambivalent
hypocrites who continued to participate in pagan sacrifices
and saw nothing particularly wrong in the combination
of paganism and Christianity, or rich patrons, whose
help early Christian communities wanted, and whose
membership they claimed. In my view then, the term
Christian in the early church is a persuasive, hopeful
and often porous category, used optimistically to
describe volunteers in a volatile and widely dispersed,
though very successful, set of small cult-groups.
3 And of course, as is now commonly agreed, there
were always in the early church a fairly large number
of different Christianities, gnostic, docetist, heretical;
Epiphanius lists 80, Augustine 88, Philastrius of
Brescia more than a hundred and fifty varieties of
heretic, some of them claiming to be, and thinking
of themselves as the true Christians. 4 Now that I
have made this point about the porosity and fluidity
of Christianity at its periphery, and the diversity
of its core, in the rest of this paper, I shall, for
the sake of argument, treat the category "Christian"
as broadly unproblematic.
2.
The Limitations of Induction
And now to number. The conventional method is heavily
inductive. Scholars string together snippets of testimony
from surviving sources. This has been done with exemplary
skill and intelligence by Adolph von Harnack in successive
editions of Die Mission und Ausbreitung des [End Page
187] Christentums. 5 The basic difficulty here is
that ancient writers, whether pagan, Jewish or Christian,
did not think statistically, and confused cool observation
with hope, despair and polemic. As a result, to put
it bluntly, most ancient observations about Christian
numbers, whether by Christian or pagan authors, should
be taken as sentimental opinions or metaphors, excellently
expressive of attitudes, but not providing accurate
information about numbers.
There would be no
profit in going through all the same testimony in
detail and seriatim again. But even at the risk of
going over well-worn ground, let me illustrate the
difficulties of interpretation, and my preferred path,
by briefly running through five well-known examples.
First, St. Paul (Rom 1.8), writing before 60: "your
faith is proclaimed in the whole world." Secondly,
the Acts of the Apostles, written towards the end
of the first century, recounts a speech to Paul in
Jerusalem by James the brother of Jesus: "you
see, brother, how many tens of thousands of the Jews
have believed" in Christ (21.20). The RSV translation
perceives and gets over the difficulty of exaggeration
here, by translating the Greek muriades (i.e., tens
of thousands) by thousands. It is widely accepted
that we should not take such statements about the
extent and number of early Christians literally. 6
Next, the famous exchange
of letters in 112 between the Roman emperor Trajan
and a provincial governor Pliny, who consulted him
about what to do with Christians in northern Asia
Minor (Pontus). This is the oldest surviving account
by a pagan writer about the practices of early Christians
and an official Roman reaction to them. 7 It is, outside
the New Testament, the most frequently cited authentication
of early Christian success and persecution in their
struggle with pagans. The Roman governor, then just
in the second year of his governorship, asked the
emperor whether all Christians were to be executed,
irrespective of [End Page 188] age, except of course
for the Roman citizens, who [like St. Paul] were sent
for trial to Rome. If those discovered to be Christian
foreswore their faith, should they be pardoned? Pliny
himself had devised successive tests for those who
claimed not to be, or to be no longer, Christian.
They were required to pray to the gods, to burn incense,
pour a libation of wine and supplicate a statue of
the emperor, specially brought by Pliny into court,
along with other statues of gods, and to curse Christ.
Pliny clearly indicated
that merely being a Christian was in itself sufficient
grounds for execution, though the obstinacy with which
some Christians clung to their perverse superstition
(superstitionem pravam, immodicam) afforded additional
justification. 8 But reports by some repentant apostates
and confessions wrung by torture from two slave-women
revealed no criminal activities (such as infanticide
or incest), only regular prayer meeetings and simple
meals eaten together.
According to Pliny,
the publicity surrounding the cases which he had already
tried stimulated further accusations, and in particular,
an anonymous accuser's list of alleged Christians.
Pliny was uneasy about the implications of further
action; so he wrote his letter to the emperor, finishing
with a polite suggestion of a way out. Actually, since
these are highly edited letters, Pliny may have changed
his ending in the light of Trajan's reply. Pliny wrote:
"many of all
ages and ranks, and of both sexes, have been or will
be summoned on a capital charge. The infection of
this superstition has spread not only to the towns
but also to the villages and countryside. But it does
seem possible to stop it and put matters right. At
any rate it is absolutely certain that temples previously
deserted have begun to be frequented again. Sacred
rites long neglected are being revived, and fodder
for victims is once again being sold. Previously buyers
were very scarce. So I conclude that a multitude of
men could be reformed, if opportunity were given them
for repentance." (Letters 10.96) [End Page 189]
The emperor replied briefly that he would not make
a general rule about procedure; Christians should
not be sought out, anonymous accusations should not
be admitted, those who said and proved that they were
not Christian by worshipping the gods were to be set
free, and those who admitted that they were Christians
should be executed. Trajan may have been thinking
that anonymous denunciations were what marred the
reign of his tyrannical predecessor, Domitian. Trajan's
reign was to be more civil. So Rome's central political
concerns influenced how even peripheral Christians
were treated. But later Christian writers waxed indignant
that merely being a Christian was sufficient grounds
for execution, whereas real criminals were punished
only after they had been proved guilty of crimes committed.
9 They had a good point in equity, but the emperor
was being practical.
I read Trajan's letter
as recommending an almost benign neglect: don't get
too worked up, don't look for trouble, ignore it if
you can; confront it if you have to; it's not a serious
problem. A Christian apologist would probably interpret
Pliny's letter quite differently. Here we have a high-level
pagan administrator, disinterestedly reporting, that
even in this insignificant corner of northern Asia
Minor, Christianity had already succeeded on such
a scale that it had been emptying pagan temples, and
was widespread in towns, villages, countryside. It
was already well-launched on its voyage to eventual
success.
This interpretation
is possible, but I think suspect. The sequence--many
Christians, everywhere, can be cured, I've taken effective
action, once deserted temples now filled, long neglected
rites now restored--seems disproportionate to the
care with which Pliny claimed to have proceeded at
the initial trials (more care, less throughput), and
the subsequent single anonymous set of accusations
described in the first part of Pliny's letter; pagan
rites neglected seems more a literary cliche than
precise reporting; Paul, according to the notoriously
unreliable Acts (19.23ff.), had exactly the same impact
in the large city of Ephesus in the mid-fifties. If
the temples were deserted (and in a polytheistic culture,
temples have, and claim fluctuating fortunes), it
was probably not because of Christianity, nor were
they recently frequented just because Pliny's show
trials had made new Christians lose their faith. In
short, I suspect (but it is a matter of judgment)
that Pliny's Christians were numbered in dozens rather
than in hundreds. And even if his account is more
accurate than I think, the situation was not typical.
Pagan temples [End Page 190] elsewhere in the Roman
empire flourished, or fluctuated in their popularity,
for the next two centuries. In my view, Pliny's account
is either inaccurate and/or describing something atypical.
Finally, three brief
quotations from somewhat later Christian writers,
Justin, Tertullian and Origen--I cite them to illustrate
an important point of method. Since some writers lie
consciously, others unconsciously mislead, some are
factually correct and others are misinformed, the
criteria of usefulness, acceptance or rejection cannot
be the source itself, but must be the nature of the
problem at issue, and the critical intelligence and
relevant knowledge, in the light of which modern historians
understand and interpret the sources. 10 History should
not be, pace the practice or presenting-style of many
colleagues, an amalgam of sources. Or perhaps rather,
it depends what you want, a pre-packed meal from a
factory (Listenwissenschaft), or a crafted confection
from a chef. The ingredients are partly the same,
the results significantly different.
Justin, in the middle
of the second century wrote that "more Christians
were ex-pagans than ex-Jews" (1 apol. 53), and
I think (for reasons discussed below) that during
his life-time this had probably come to be true, though
he cannot have had enough information to know so accurately.
Tertullian in the beginning of the third century wrote
of Christians: "In spite of our huge numbers,
almost a majority in every city, we conduct our lives
in silence and modesty" (ad Scapulam 2). I doubt
if either claim can have been true; and I doubt if
anyone ever accused Tertullian of modesty. Origen,
in the middle of the third century, wrote: "It
is obvious that in the beginning Christians were small
in number" (Cels. 3.10). But even a hundred passages
of this quality do not allow us to trace the pattern
of Christianity's growth with any confidence.
Harnack made the best
possible use of such impressionistic sources. He was
very reluctant to plumb for a single overall estimate
of the number of Christians in the Roman empire as
a whole. He thought that at the beginning of the fourth
century, on the eve of the Constantinian revolution,
the density of Christianity varied so much between
different provinces, as to make an overall estimate
useless. In Asia Minor, Harnack reckoned that almost
half the population was Christian, while the proportion
of Christians, for example, in France or Germany,
was insubstantial or negligible. But then in a footnote,
he surrendered and [End Page 191] declared that between
250 and 312, the Christian population probably increased
from 7-10% of the empire's total population. 11 But
any such estimate, however well informed, can inevitably
be only that, on a guess.
3.
Seduction by Probability
Other scholars have not been so cautious as Harnack,
but have generally more or less followed his lead.
Their general opinions seem to hover around a gross
estimate that in 300 about 10% of the total population
of the Roman empire was Christian. 12 With Harnack's
qualification about variation in mind, let's tentatively
and without any commitment as to its truth, take this
overall estimate (that in 300, 10% of the population
of the Roman empire, i.e., roughly 6 million people
were Christian) as a benchmark, and see where it leads
us. We can call it arguing by parametric probability,
that is, by setting an arbitrary boundary against
which to test other conclusions. 13 It is as though
we set about estimating the weight of an elephant,
by first imagining it to be a solid cube.
We have an end point.
Now we need a beginning. It is obvious that Christianity
began small. And Origen says so (Cels. 3.10)! Let
us make an arbitrary estimate that in 40 about 1000
people were Christians 14 --though of course at this
stage of Christian evolution, it is probable that
they would have envisaged themselves as Jews, who
also believed in the divinity of Jesus. Actually,
not a lot hangs on the exact numbers either at the
beginning or the end, as will become clear when we
consider Figure 1. Our primary purpose overall in
this article is to think through the implications
of Christian growth, not to measure it precisely (that
is impossible), nor even to explain it. 15
Figure 1 sets out
a constant growth line implied by simple intrapolation
between our starting number, 1000 Christians in 40
and our end number, [End Page 192] six million Christians
in 300. I have plotted the growth in Christian numbers
on a semi-log scale, because that allows us to envisage
huge growth from 1000 to 6 million at a glance. 16
But to avoid misunderstanding, let me stress that
my initial acceptance of these estimates is only a
heuristic device. Initial acceptance implies no final
commitment to the estimates' truth. To help matters
along, I have also set out the implications of this
consistent growth-line, by reading across the graph
to specify the Christian numbers implied, at successive
intervals between 50 and 350. 17 [End Page 193]
Of course, in reality,
Christian membership probably fluctuated. It probably
grew faster in some periods, while in others, for
example, during persecutions, it even lost numbers.
18 In reality, growth was probably not consistent.
We can easily imagine three competing probabilities:
a) perhaps in the beginning growth was faster, and
then slower later, (i.e., above the first part of
the line in Figure 1), or
b) perhaps it was slower at the beginning and even
faster later (below the first part of the line in
Figure 1); or
c) perhaps growth
fluctuated at different periods (above and below the
line in Figure 1). Drawing a single path of consistent
growth is merely an intellectual economy in the face
of competing probabilities, and in the absence of
reliable data.
My general procedure
here is obviously experimental. Instead of being inductive,
moving from the evidence to a conclusion, I start
with a parametric pattern, which is like a limiting
case, against which the fragments of evidence can
be tested, or around which they can be fitted. I then
wonder what the implications of this parametric pattern
are for understanding early Christianity. I hope you
will be persuaded that this experimental and unashamedly
speculative method is a useful supplement to, though
of course not a replacement for, common inductive
practices. And it will not have escaped you, that
I am behaving rather like an early Christian in pagan
society, trying to upset fellow scholars, by non-conformity.
But what is the use
of so speculative a line, so arbitrarily drawn? What
is its epistemological status? These questions are
completely reasonable. My answer is that the straight
line in Figure 1 is like a set of goal posts in a
game of football; arbitrarily placed, but good to
measure the game against. So let's play. Five gambits
deserve attention: 1) absolute numbers and proportions
over time, 2) community numbers and size, 3) distribution
by sex and age, 4) literacy, and 5) comparison with
Jews. Let us deal with each in turn. [End Page 194]
4.
Absolute Numbers, Proportions and Persecutions
According to Figure 1, in 100, there were only about
7000 or so Christians, equal to barely 0.01% of the
empire's population (roughly say 60 million). And
in 200, there were only just over 200,000 Christians,
barely 0.35% of the total population. 19 Let me stress
once again, that these are not truth statements; they
are crude probabilities attached to very rough orders
of magnitude. They are numerical metaphors, good for
thinking about Christians with.
Such estimates imply
that, practically speaking, for the whole of this
period, Christians were statistically insignificant.
Of course, an objector might say, numbers by themselves
do not necessarily equate with importance. Perhaps
not, but the number of members in a religious movement
is one measure of its importance; or rather it is
one factor in the discrepancy between self-importance
and importance as perceived by others. Even if we
accommodate all Christians in 200 in the urban population
of the central and eastern Mediterranean (a very strong
and probably incorrect assumption), they still constituted
only about 1/30 of the probable urban and metropolitan
population. 20
The statistical insignificance
of Christians, in relation to the rest of the empire's
population, allows us to complement and correct the
perspective of surviving Christian writers. Christians
themselves could properly see that their religion
was expanding successfully and very fast. And they
sometimes, as we have seen, made exaggerated and self-inflating
claims [End Page 195] to that effect. 21 But their
absolute numbers long remained small. The same facts,
differently perceived, generated variant accounts.
From an official, upper-class Roman point of view,
Christians did not matter, except as occasional individual
or local nuisances, or as scapegoats, sacrificed to
placate unruly crowds. 22 For example, Herodian's
political history of the Roman empire, written in
the early third century and covering the period from
180 to 238, does not mention Christians at all. From
a Roman government point of view, it was not worthwhile
persecuting Christians systematically. And from a
Jewish perspective, as we shall see in a moment, Christians
were only a minor annoyance.
But what of Christian
stories about being persecuted, repeatedly and from
the earliest days, by Romans, Jews and pagans, everywhere?
23 As I see it, the image of persistent persecution
which Christians manufactured for themselves was more
a mode of self-representation, or a tactic of self-unification
than an objective description of reality. I am not
saying that persecutions did not happen. Sure they
did, occasionally and sporadically. And the fear of
persecution probably sat like a huge cloud over Christian
prayer meetings. It may even have kept many Christians
from openly professing their faith. But persecutions
were also useful. Fear of them pulled Christians together,
sorted the sheep from the goats, decreased the risk
of insincere hangers-on, and helped enthuse the survivors
that being a Christian was really worthwhile. Being
persecuted was collective proof of Christian radicality,
and an instrument of togetherness. Besides, martyrdom
was a special, Christian type of [End Page 196] heroism.
Mostly, you didn't actually have to die for your faith,
though you could parade your willingness--if the need
arose. But you had to admire those who, like Christ,
were willing to, or had died, for their faith. 24
So the traditional
question: "Why were the Christians persecuted?"
with all its implications of unjust repression and
eventual triumph, should be re-phrased: "Why
were the Christians persecuted so little and so late?"
Our answer should recognize that for most of the first
three centuries c.e., Christians were protected from
persistent persecution, both by the Roman government's
failure to perceive that Christianity mattered, and
by its punctilious legalism, which prohibited anonymous
denunciation through the courts. At a formal level,
Roman legalism protected Christianity against large-scale
persecution, for well over a century. Informally,
in unofficial assaults and mass disturbances, Christians
were persecuted, but, as I have said, only occasionally
and sporadically. So too were Jews. 25
In these unofficial
attacks, it was, I suspect, pagan perception of Christians'
behavior as idiosyncratic (their refusal to attend
traditional public festivals, their private meetings,
their rigid morality and secret gestures) more than
their beliefs, which provoked repression. 26 In a
publicly committed, polytheistic society, Christians
seemed to those who noticed them, a new-fangled and
odd-ball group of monotheists. Besides, Christianity
could expand so fast, only by winning adherents from
old-established practices/gods, and by drawing attention
to how very different Christians were from everybody
else. 27 Small wonder if this [End Page 197] combination
of ostentatious difference and successful proselytism
provoked occasional outbursts of hostility.
In the first two centuries
after Jesus' death, Christians needed Roman persecutors,
or at least stories about Roman persecutors, rather
more than Romans saw the need to persecute Christians.
Christianity survived and prospered, partly because
of its intrinsic virtues, but partly also because
Roman persecutions allowed Christians to nurture a
sense of danger and victimization, without there ever
having been a real danger of collective exstirpation.
Christianity was also often protected by Roman officials'
insistence on a legalism which effectively shielded
Christians against arbitrary prosecutions. And that
protectivism itself persisted, because the Roman government
long failed to realize that it needed to protect itself
against religious subversion as much as, or more than,
against barbarian invasions. The religious frontier
was largely undefended, because well-organized attacks
along it were unexpected.
But it is only when
we play this game of numbers and proportions, that
we see most clearly that the third century was the
critical period of Christian growth. According to
the figures tentatively projected in Figure 1, Christian
numbers grew in the third century from about 200,000
to over six million. Or put another way, it was only
in the third century that Christianity gained the
prominence that made it worthwhile persecuting on
an empire-wide scale. But by the time the Roman government
finally began to realize that Christianity posed a
significant threat, and started systematic persecution
of Christian leaders and their property (in 250-51
under Decius, in 257-60 under Valerian, after 303
under Diocletian), Christianity was too embedded to
be stamped out easily. And it was particularly in
this period of persecutions, in spite of temporary
losses, that Christianity grew fastest in absolute
terms. In other words, in terms of number, persecution
was good for Christianity.
5.
Communities: Number, Size and Dispersion
First a word of caution, "community," like
the term "Christian," is a persuasive and
porous category. In modern histories of the early
church, community is often used as a category of expansion
and idealism. For example, when we have a text, it
is understandably tempting to assume [End Page 198]
that the author and his immediate audience constituted
a "community." Hence the commonly touted
concept of Pauline communities, Johannine communities,
Gnostic communities; each text is assumed to have
had a matching set of the faithful, who formed solidary
communities, and these communities putatively used
particular texts as their foundation or charter myths.
In fact, we have very
little information about how early Christian followers
organized themselves, or how these so-called communities
used early Christian writings. We can argue quite
plausibly that successive changes in reporting Jesus
stories in the gospel texts (e.g., from Mark to Matthew/Luke
to John) reflected the new and varying needs/interests
of successive communities. But plausibility does not
equal truth. All we have are the texts. The invention
of communities is a defensible, but abusable, tactic
of inflating the text into social history.
But there is more
to it than that--early Christian communities are often
imaged in modern pious thought, and in much scholarly
literature, as models for modern believers. In the
beginning, the myth seems to go, early Christians
faithfully followed the prescriptions of Jesus and
the apostles; the earliest Christian communities were
close-knit, pious, mutually supportive and devoted;
in short, the earliest Christians were "true
Christians." And, of course, early Christian
writers themselves idealized the community/ies (koinonia,
ekklesia) of Christians. The concept community plays
a crucial role in the self-representations of early
Christian collectivities.
Needless to say, practice
diverged from the ideal, even if ideals of community
played a significant role in influencing practice.
Paul's letters to the Corinthians, for example, amply
indicate the internal tensions which affected, and
divided groups of early Christians. 28 Inevitably,
some early communities were riven by internal differences,
social and doctrinal, and partly so, exactly because
they contained fervent idealists. Some individuals
thought that they had already been saved, so that
they were free from ethical strictures. Others differed
in their practice, commitment, and teachings. Some
teachers even were greedy and exploitative. 29 [End
Page 199] In sum, the concept community is used to
disguise these internal divisions and shifting boundaries,
and to project the legitimacy and effectiveness of
Christianity's exclusive claims over its members,
as though all early Christians must have been full
members of a community of Christians.
But the concept still
has its uses. Let us proceed by trying to estimate
how many Christian communities there were. The normal
procedure is of course inductive. Harnack listed as
the location of a Christian community any place mentioned
in early Christian texts as having had Christians.
This procedure yields estimates of about fifty Christian
communities in 100, and about one hundred Christian
communities in 180. But this inductive procedure is
suspect. Such listings are liable to be seriously
incomplete, as Harnack himself fully realized. 30
Surviving sources are only a small fraction of what
was once written.
Once again we can
play with probabilities in a scissor-argument. As
a heuristic device, without commitment to its truth,
let us assume that these fifty Christian communities
wrote/received on average two letters per year during
the period 50-150. That is surely a low level of inter-community
correspondence; less and there was little hope of
securing inter-community coherence; more, then my
argument holds a fortiori. But if the average inter-community
correspondence was only two letters per year, then
in this period, ten thousand letters were written,
of which barely fifty survive. I do this calculation,
exempli causa, merely to illustrate how hazardous
conventional inductive procedures are, when scholars
so carefully reconstruct church history only from
surviving sources. Or put another way, those who think,
as I do, that the earliest Christian communities,
corresponded about their religion quite frequently,
i.e., more than twice a year on average, must also
recognize the appalling unrepresentativeness of their
sources, and the limitations of induction.
My own guess is that
in 100 and 180 respectively, there were significantly
more than the 50/100 Christian communities listed
by Harnack. I have two principal reasons for increasing
his numbers. First, I see no reason in principle why
Christian success was limited to those towns mentioned
in the scarce surviving sources. Secondly, early Christian
groups (through lack of resources and fear of persecution)
typically [End Page 200] met in private houses. 31
So in larger towns, there were probably several distinct
Christian gatherings, by which I mean groups of Christians
who regularly worshipped together, but who may or
may not have thought of themselves as linked with
all other local or regional Christian groups.
I prefer to think
of these early Christian nodules as "house cult-groups,"
rather than as communities. The term captures the
image of enthusiasm, radicality and fear of persecution
which perhaps characterized some early Christian gatherings.
Ideally, of course, these house cult-groups may have
been loosely coordinated, by cooperation, or hierarchically
under a priest or bishop, into a community. However,
I suspect that in the conditions of early Christianity,
close coordination of dispersed house cult-groups
would have been difficult to achieve. The different
house cult-groups within each town were more likely
to reflect Christian diversity than homogeneity. Some
Jewish evidence, though not strictly comparable, illustrates
the dispersion of the faithful among groups inside
towns. In Sepphoris and Caesarea, each of them middle-size
Palestinian towns, there were seventeen and nineteen
synagogues respectively. 32 A principle is easily
deducible: the larger the number of Christians within
any town and the larger the town, the greater the
probable number of house cult-groups.
How big were these
communities or house cult-groups? We do not know.
So, once again, I think the most sensible procedure
is to play probabilities with a scissor argument.
Three preliminary considerations seem important. First,
we should take into account the diversity of primitive
Christianity, its incapacity to control fragmentation,
and the probability that there were several separate
house cult-groups in larger towns. Secondly, the larger
the community in each town, the more separate house
cult-groups there probably were, since at least up
to the end of the second century, Christians usually
met in private houses and not in dedicated, stand-apart
religious buildings. Thirdly, above a certain size
(perhaps a few dozen), the larger the house cult-group,
the less possible it was for all members to meet together
regularly in a private house. Larger size involved
a diminution of attendance or commitment. [End Page
201]
If we follow Harnack,
then in 100, there were about fifty Christian communities;
each Christian community therefore (according to the
numbers set out in Figure 1), had a membership on
average of 140 people (7000/50 = 140). 33 But if we
follow the arguments outlined above, there were significantly
more than fifty communities and/or house cult-groups.
I suspect that even by 100, there were probably more
than one hundred Christian house cult-groups dispersed
over the eastern Mediterranean basin, with an average
size of less than seventy people. This reconstruction
surely fits better with the idea of early Christian
radical commitment, and the probable size of houses
used by a non-elite sect (see below).
Let us move ahead
in time. By 180, according to Harnack, there were
a hundred or so Christian communities recorded in
surviving sources. 34 As before, it seems reasonable
to think, because of the accidents of loss and survival
in the sources, that this is an underestimate; and
if only because of intermittent persecutions, meetings
were still held in houses or house-churches, so that
there were many more house cult-groups than communities.
And of course, by this time there was more heaping
in the density of Christian membership. In the huge
cities of Rome and Alexandria, and in Antioch and
Carthage, each with a population of above 100,000,
Christian communities were probably substantial. Each
metropolitan church (considered as a single collective
or community) probably had several (e.g., 5-10) thousand
members, enough to support a hierarchy of professional
and dependent clergy, and a visible program of support
for the poor. 35 But in many other towns, Christian
communities, and their associated house cult-groups,
must have remained still quite small. The house cult-group,
even towards the end of the second century, was still
the norm.
We could, as before,
simply and arbitrarily, double Harnack's estimate,
and say that there were Christian communities (and
many more house cult-groups) in say 200 towns, with
an average membership of 500 people ( Figure 1: 100,000/200
= 500). But according to this [End Page 202] reconstruction,
the vast majority of the two thousand odd cities of
the Roman empire, 1800 out of 2000, had no Christian
community at all. 36 If the historical reconstructor
has to choose between, on the one hand, relative concentration
and larger average community size, and, on the other
hand, dispersed smallness, with a handful of exceptionally
large metropolitan communities, I myself favor the
second choice. As I see it, Christianity towards the
end of the second century was more pervasive; i.e.,
it had more small cells in more towns, say 200-400
of the two thousand towns in the Roman empire. This
dispersion was a significant factor in the character
of early Christianity, both because it considerably
increased the difficulties of controlling diversity,
but at the same time stimulated attempts among Christian
leaders to control it.
Christianity was still
probably concentrated in towns in the central and
eastern Mediterranean basin, although there were some
Christian communities in southern Gaul. And by this
period, Christianity had begun to attract some, though
very limited numbers from among influential provincial
supporters and contributors, including knights and
town-councillors. It now had some well-educated members
and sponsors (but see section 7). Its liability to
sporadic persecution, its general shortage of funds
and the recurrent need to keep discreetly quiet about
its activities, kept its normal cell size still within
the bounds of house meetings. It seems no accident
therefore that the earliest dated church building
to survive comes from the mid-third century, and that
very few ostensibly Christian, burial inscriptions
date from the third century or earlier. 37 Christianity
in the early third century still had the aroma of
a once secret society. In the third and fourth centuries,
as Christianity expanded, Christians came more out
into the open, built large churches, but inevitably
many of them became actually, though not ideally,
more like other Romans. 38 [End Page 203]
6.
Age, Sex and the Role of Women
According to modern historical demographers, ancient
populations were usually made up, roughly speaking,
of 30% adult males, 30% adult females, and 40% children
of both sexes under age seventeen. 39 Mortality was
particularly high among infants and children under
five, but by modern standards continued to be very
high in adult populations. For example, roughly speaking,
half of those surviving to the age of fifteen, died
by the age of fifty. Sickness and death, and presumably
the fear of death, were pervasive. Hence, crudely
speaking, the significance and appeal of immortality.
These basic figures
are fundamental for understanding the structure and
growth of early Christian communities and house cult-groups.
So, for example, if by 100, there were one hundred
Christian communities, then the average community
consisted of seventy people ( Figure 1: 7000/100 =
70) with perhaps twenty adult males, twenty adult
females (or twenty families), and thirty children.
Of course, early Christian house cult-groups were
probably more numerous, and correspondingly smaller
(perhaps averaging a dozen or so families?), depending
as they did on the sizes of houses, owned by Christians
and available for meetings.
But some ancient critics
of Christianity and modern scholars have argued that
women were particularly prone to conversion to Christianity;
and it is clear from the earliest Christian writings,
that women played an important role in primitive Christian
house cult-groups. 40 Of course, it is arguable that
women, marginalized in a male-dominated Roman [End
Page 204] society, were more likely to join a marginal
religion, such as Christianity, as a covert form of
rebellion. But to my eyes, the homology (marginal
women, marginal religion) seems more rhetorical than
descriptive. And ancient pagan criticisms that Christianity
was particularly attractive to women and slaves were
a literary cliche, expressing a depreciatory attitude
towards women and Christianity more than cool observation.
Modern evidence on
conversion to religious cults also suggests that young
adults (sometimes of both sexes, sometimes of females
primarily, with males as secondary converts through
the female converts) are prime customers for conversion,
through personal social contacts. It seems likely
that the pattern of religious recruitment to Christianity
in the Roman empire was similar, if only because young
adults could and sometimes did feel they wanted to
break away from what they perceived as repressive
familial norms. So in a rapidly growing cult, there
may be a tendency to overrecruit young adults (and
arguably more women than men). 41
But a religion growing
as fast as Christianity is supposed to have done (according
to Figure 1, 3.4% compound increase per year), needed
both men and women. Demographically, the new religion
can be understood as being like a colony, which receives
lots of young immigrants. It benefits from the fresh
converts' higher (age-specific) fertility, compared
with the general population, and providing that the
converts' children themselves continue as Christians,
this age imbalance among Christians may account for
some (though it cannot account for all) the growth
in Christian numbers. 42 But the greater the degree
that the religion depends [End Page 205] on children
of Christians as recruits (and how else could a cult
grow so rapidly?), the smaller the probability of
persistent sexual imbalance. Or put another way, the
larger the number of Christians, the more likely that
their demographic and social composition reflects
that of the larger population.
Once we take all the
considerations which we have discussed together (sex
and age composition, dispersion, variety of belief
and practice, fission, the fear of persecution, the
need for secrecy, the prevalence of house cult-groups,
and the availability of houses for meetings), we can
plot a plausible path of Christian evolution. In 100,
there were perhaps about one hundred Christian communities,
dispersed in towns, mostly in the eastern and central
Mediterranean basin; and many of these communities
were further split into house cult-groups. On average,
each community had seventy members, and many of these
were children. House cult-groups were, by definition,
even smaller, with an average size of a dozen or so
families. By 200, Christian numbers had grown to over
200,000, spread in several hundred (say 200-400) towns
out of the two thousand-odd towns in the Roman empire.
So the average size of each community was in the range
of 500-1000. But some metropolitan communities were
very large (several thousand strong) and hierarchically
organized. Even there and elsewhere, house cult-groups
were still the dominant norm.
What are the implications
of the small average size of early Christian house
cult-groups and communities? First, in small groups,
it is easier to enforce discipline, to foster internal
collusion about the benefits of belief, to give mutual
reassurance, and to diminish the role of free-riders,
i.e., those who undermine collective commitment, by
seeking the benefits without paying the costs of membership.
In other words, small groups can more easily maintain
a collusive sense of the superiority of their own
vision, and of the benefits of their own beliefs and
lifestyle. Secondly, the relative importance of women
in the workings of the primitive church, albeit disputed,
may have been a function of the small numbers in each
cult-group, as well as of differential recruitment.
But, per contra, it
is extremely difficult for dispersed and prohibited
house cult-groups and communities to maintain and
enforce common beliefs and common liturgical practices,
across space and time in pre-industrial [End Page
206] conditions of communications. 43 The frequent
claims that scattered Christian communities constituted
a single church was not a description of reality in
the first two centuries c.e., but a blatant yet forceful
denial of reality. What was amazing was the persistence
and power of the ideal in the face of its unachievability,
even in the fourth century. On a local level, it is
also unlikely that twenty households in a typical
community, let alone a dozen households in a house
cult-group, could maintain even one full-time, non-earning
priest. Perhaps a group of forty households could,
especially if they had a wealthy patron. But for most
Christian communities of this size, a hierarchy of
bishop and lesser clergy seems completely inappropriate.
7.
Literacy and Stratification
The concepts literacy/illiteracy cover a broad range
of techniques (from inability to read or write, barely
reading, or writing slowly and with difficulty, artisanal/instrumental
reading or writing of a limited range of words, reading
and writing fluently, to reading/writing poetry or
theology), and correspondingly different levels of
competence and understanding. William Harris, in his
ground-breaking and synoptic survey of ancient literacy,
cautiously estimated that ancient literacy rates after
about 100 b.c.e. in the Roman world were on average
no more than 10-20% among males (much less for females).
The general literacy rate in the Roman empire as a
whole was kept down by the gap between various native
languages (Egyptian, Aramaic, Punic, etc.) and the
administrative and upper-culture language of the Roman
conquerors, Greek and Latin. Urban literacy rates
were in all probability significantly higher than
rural rates; and there was considerable regional variation
(the eastern Mediterranean was more literate than
the western Mediterranean). Most literacy was at the
basic, slow and functional end of the literacy range.
44 Fluent, sophisticated literacy was concentrated
in, but was not the exclusive privilege of, the ruling
strata.
A brief analysis of
Roman stratification might be helpful here. The Roman
empire was a preponderantly agricultural society,
with 80% or [End Page 207] so of the population engaged
in farming, and 15% of the population living in towns.
45 The stratification pyramid was very steeply pitched,
i.e., there was a huge gap between a small, powerful
and rich elite and the mass of rural and urban poor.
For example, a middling senator at the end of the
first century c.e. had an income sufficient to support
two thousand families at subsistence level. 46 In
between the elite and the mass, there was a sub-elite
(inevitably a shadowy, but still a useful concept)
of unknown size, which comprised middling land-owners,
merchants, professionals, such as lawyers, doctors,
architects, professors of rhetoric and philosophy,
middling and lesser administrators, army officers,
scribes, school-teachers, and eventually Christian
ideologues. These sub-elites were probably particularly
concentrated in the metropolitan centers (Rome, Alexandria,
Antioch, Carthage), in the larger cities (such as
Ephesus, Corinth or Milan) and in merchant ports (Puteoli,
Ostia, Cadiz) and the university town of Athens.
The steepness of the
stratification pyramid, and the relatively small size
of the Roman middle class, meant that people in intermediate
positions could both be despised by their superiors,
and appear privileged to those beneath them. It is
also worth stressing that sophisticated literacy correlated
significantly with wealth and high social status,
but high status, literacy and wealth did not completely
coincide. There were some slaves and ex-slaves, for
example, who were low in status, but who were literary
sophisticates, just as there were rich land-owners,
who were, or were thought to be, cultural boors. It
is sometimes argued that Christianity particularly
appealed to people with high status inconsistency;
it may be correct, and particularly important for
the first phase of Christian expansion, but cannot
account for the rate of expansion in the empire as
a whole. 47
Now for proportions
and numbers. As usual in Roman history, little is
known for sure. But the ruling elite of senators,
knights and town-councillors (decuriones) can be estimated
at just over 1% of the adult [End Page 208] population,
comprising some 210,000 adult males. 48 There is no
particular advantage in estimating the size of the
sub-elite, since its bottom boundaries are necessarily
fuzzy. But I speculate that it constituted say another
2% of the total population, of whom at most half (another
200,000 adult males and far fewer females) possessed
a sophisticated and fluent literacy. This relatively
low percentage of literary sophisticates, compared
with the modern industrial world, reflects the level
of Roman social evolution (the percentage of literates
at any level in the Mediterranean basin as a whole
had been near zero a thousand years earlier), and
the relative absence from Roman society of a middle
class. 49 That said, the proportion of sophisticated
literates may seem low, at <2% of adult males,
but it is also, I think, a generous estimate, if they
constituted between a fifth and a tenth of all literates
at whatever level (and if literates constituted 10-20%
of the male population). By this tentative reckoning,
there were about 400,000 literary sophisticates (of
different levels) in the Roman empire. 50
Let's now apply these
general, albeit hypothetical, literacy rates to Christians.
The basic problem is that we know very little about
the social standing of early Christians. But we can
follow several clues. It seems generally agreed that
Christianity did not initially attract converts from
among the ruling strata of senators, knights and town-councillors,
or not in significant numbers, at least until the
third century. Complementarily, the self-presenting
profile of primitive Christianity is repeatedly anti-rich
(Luke 6.24: "Woe to you that are rich"),
anti-ruling powers (e.g., Revelation 17, in which
Rome is portrayed as "Babylon, the great mother
of harlots and of earth's abominations"), and
artisinal. 51 Jesus himself is represented as the
son of a carpenter, a simple man at home in [End Page
209] the villages of Galilee, Paul is proud of earning
his living as a tent-maker, the apostles are drawn
from a set of illiterate fishermen and tax-collectors.
Pagan critics of Christianity accused them of avoiding
the educated (a charge which the third-century Origen
denied strenuously), and of recruiting particularly
among tradesmen, illiterates, women and children.
Or put briefly, in this view, primitive Christianity
was aimed at the poor, and was led by the underprivileged.
52 It was, and was seen as, a religion of opposition.
These arguments have
both strengths and weaknesses. To be sure, as Christianity
grew, it had to recruit from among the poor; and Christian
writers themselves acknowledged that the bulk of the
faithful were illiterate. 53 How could it have been
otherwise, if the sect was to grow so fast? But two
counter-arguments also seem compelling. First, the
texts of the New Testament itself, the New Testament
apocrypha and early Apostolic Fathers must have been
written by members of that small stratum, within the
top 2% of Roman society, who could write Greek fluently.
The New Testament writings are of course not part
of high classical culture; they do not match the careful
court writings of essayists like Seneca, historians
like Tacitus, or rhetoricians such as Dio Chrysostom.
The gospels are written in ostensibly, one might even
say ostentatiously, simpler, instrumental prose; but
Matthew and John, at least, are consciously artful,
while Paul is idiosyncratically inventive.
Complementarily, the
rhetoric of simplicity and the appeal to the foolish
and poor was just that, a rhetorical play. It made
the best of Jesus' humble background in the urban
world of Hellenized culture, in which the gospel message
was sold. But why was the message so successful, how
could it remain virtually unchanged in its primary
focus, as Christianity went socially up-market? 54
I wonder if the answer lies partly in the steepness
of the social pyramid, and in the tiny size of its
middle class. Roman society demanded an uncomfortable
mixture of [End Page 210] pervasive deference to superiors
and openly aggressive brutishness to inferiors, not
just slaves. It was a world of deference and condescension,
of curt commands and pervasive threats. It was in
this world that nearly everyone, even a middling senator
with an income which could support thousands, could
imagine himself to be poor. Poverty is best seen as
a subjective, not an objective category.
Two subsidiary points
need to be dealt with briefly. It might be argued
that early Christians were disproportionately literate,
partly because sacred texts were central to Christian
religious practice, and partly because they inherited
a commitment to education and reading from Jewish
tradition and practice. But the centrality of sacred
texts to liturgical practice is no proof of widespread
or disproportionate literacy; believers can participate
by listening, as well as by reading. The development
of the post of lector (i.e., reader) in the early
Christian church indeed suggests that most believers
could not read, and had the text read to them. Besides,
the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was
the exemplary Christian sacred text well into the
second century (or even of selected passages from
it) would have been too expensive for most people
to afford. And as to the New Testament, it is doubtful
if many/most Christian communities had a full set
even of the core texts (Gospels, Acts, Letters) before
the second half of the second century. 55
As to the Jewish tradition
of widespread literacy, I suspect assessment of it
is often apologetic and idealistic. Prescription was
conflated with practice. Ideally, of course, Jewish
fathers had a duty to teach their sons to read. Rabbinical
sources emphasize how many schools there had been
in the old days, in first century Palestine: for example,
480 schools in Jerusalem and 500 in the undistinguished
town of Beitar, each with 500 students. Even if we
grant that Jews in the first century were exceptionally
educated, compared with pagans, and that this tradition
had some initial effect on primitive Christianity
(after all, it too became a religion [End Page 211]
of the book), the characteristic was not central to
Christian self-identity. Early Christians did not
establish their own specifically Christian elementary
or secondary schools. 56 Therefore, it seems reasonable
to conclude that Christians were, roughly speaking,
no more literate, or only marginally more literate
than the sub-populations from which they were recruited.
In sum, let us suppose,
generously, that 20% of Christian adult males were
literate at some level or other, and that 2% of Christian
adult males were sophisticated, fluent literates.
Female literacy was, I assume, very significantly
lower, even from a statistical point of view, negligible.
The estimate for sophisticated literacy is especially
generous, if our argument is granted that almost no
Christians, in the first two centuries c.e., were
recruited from the ruling elite of senators, knights
and town-councillors (though obviously some came from
the sub-elites). The consequences of these proportions
can be analyzed for Christians as a whole and for
typical communities and house cult-groups, at different
periods.
The implications of
these literacy rates are quite startling. In 100,
there were, according to the numbers estimated in
Figure 1, about 7000 Christians, of whom about 30%
= 2100 were adult males. Of these, say 20% = 420 could
read and write at varying levels of literacy. But
only 2%, that is 42 adult Christian males were fluent
and skilled literates. Of course, the reasoning is
too speculative to be trusted in detail; the number
42 is here a symbol for a small number of unknown
size. But even if we double or treble it, in order
to flatter the social composition, or literary skills
of primitive Christianity, and add in some female
skilled literates, we can still see that intellectual
Christianity, that is, the part of Christianity which
is preserved and transmitted in the sacred texts,
was composed, explained and developed, by a tiny group
of specialists, very thinly spread across the eastern
and central Mediterranean basin. 57
If we split these
7000 Christians of 100 among 100 or so communities
(and more house cult-groups), each on average with
seventy members, [End Page 212] the implications are
striking. Each community had, on average, twenty adult
male members, of whom two were literate at some level.
But many or most Christian communities (and a fortiori
even more house cult-groups) simply did not have among
them a single sophisticated reader or writer. After
all, sophisticated literate Christians were likely
to concentrate in the bigger towns.
By 178, according
to the numbers posited in Figure 1, there were about
100,000 Christians, of whom 30,000 were adult males,
split among say 200 or more town communities, and
significantly more house cult-groups. By this time,
the total number of sophisticated literate adult males
who were Christian had burgeoned to six hundred. And
by the end of the second century, it was, by these
calculations, well over one thousand. Indeed, we can
see in the surviving literature that Christian writers
were now trying to assimilate their writings to classical
upper-class pagan culture. 58 And there were enough
Christian sophisticated literates overall, even with
bunching in larger towns, for us to imagine that each
community had one sophisticated literate leader. I
think the imaging of Christian growth proposed here
has some implications for the evolution of the episcopacy.
Only towards the end of the second century, was it
possible to find an educated leader for each Christian
community.
8.
Christians and Jews
Before we desert number, let us take a brief look
at the Jews. Modern scholars, from hopelessly inadequate
data, customarily guess that Jews in the early first
century c.e. constituted about 7-8% of the population
of the Roman empire. According to these guesses, which
may be inflated, there were about 4.2-4.8 million
Jews in the Roman empire in the mid-first century
c.e. 59 The great majority of these Jews lived outside
Palestine, because the carrying capacity of Palestine
in ancient economic conditions (and by no means all
the inhabitants there were Jews) was about a million
people. 60 I myself would be happier with a much lower
[End Page 213] estimate of 3 million Jews than with
the higher estimate, but with either there is a high
probable margin of error. However, numerical precision
is not important here; for the moment, we are concerned
only with very rough orders of comparative magnitude.
Jews outside Palestine
but in the Roman empire, like Christians initially,
were concentrated in towns in the eastern and central
Mediterranean basin. For all the differences between
Jews and Christians, Jews constituted the most obvious
target customers for evangelical Christians, particularly
after the destruction of the temple, and three disastrously
unsuccessful rebellions against Rome (66-74, 117-18,
132-35). By then, many Jews must have been disenchanted,
disaffected and despondent, ready to receive alternative
messages, or even to desert their Judaism. 61 Some
Jews must have been tempted, as the original followers
of Jesus were, to join a radical renewal movement.
After all, Jews knew half the Christian story, some
expected or hoped for a messiah, and believed in an
interventionist God; they largely shared Christian
ethics, and thought that religious piety involved
religious control over private life.
If I had been a hungry,
wandering Christian beggar-missionary in search of
success and food in the first hundred years after
Jesus' death, I like Paul, perhaps even at the risk
of a beating, would have made for a synagogue or house
of a pious god-fearer, in preference to the market-square
or the temple of Jupiter. 62 In sum, it seems reasonable
to suppose that Jewish-Christians, who awkwardly straddled
both Judaism and [End Page 214] Christianity, to the
eventual indignation of both, probably for a significant
period constituted the central, numerical core of
Christians.
Three arguments of
unequal weight support this claim. First, modern studies
of cult-group conversions in North America show that
conversion flows principally along lines of social
networks. 63 Relatives and friends are primary targets
as converts. Few conversions are made cold, for example,
on doorsteps or by telephone. Of course, the social
conditions of ancient and modern cultures are different.
The New Testament and early Christian writings dwell
on mass, or exemplary conversions, after miracles
and healings. 64 But for me these sound like stories
told to bolster the faith of the faithful, not descriptions
of reality. Since the first Christians were Jews,
then ethnic Jews and their associates at synagogues,
the god-fearers, were the most probable clients for
early Christian missionaries in towns throughout the
eastern Mediterranean and beyond.
Secondly, Justin (1
apol. 53) wrote in the mid-second century that by
then the number of ex-gentile Christians outnumbered
ex-Jewish Christians. I am not concerned here with
the statistical element in Justin's formulation, but
with the historical process to which he alludes. In
all probability, he did not know the proportion of
ex-Jews and ex-gentiles in dispersed Christian groups,
but did think that ex-Jews formed a substantial portion
of Christians, even in the mid-second century. And
to me, that seems highly probable. It makes sense.
Finally, I cite, exempli
causa, the preoccupations of the gospels with things
Jewish, the great body of pseudepigraphic writings
of Jewish origin preserved by Christians, and the
early Christian ethical writings like the Didache
and the Epistle of Barnabas, which illustrate the
continuity and overlap between Judaism and early Christianity.
In this view, Christianity was to a large extent ethical
Judaism, without circumcision and detailed rules of
observance, plus a belief in Jesus as Messiah. It
was a religion which in its early form was more likely
to appeal to Jews than pagans. Indeed, Christian preoccupation
with the wickedness of the Jews, from Pharisees to
High Priest, and with [End Page 215] establishing
their moral inferiority illustrates the urgency of
Christian leaders' needs to differentiate themselves
from their prime rivals.
Back, once again,
to parametric (im)probabilities. My general argument
here is that Christianity should have appealed particularly
to Jews rather than to pagans. But according to the
figures which I have cited, if only 3.3%, or one in
thirty Jews (i.e., according to my low estimate, 3,000,000/30
= 100,000) embraced Christianity before 175 (and some
could have done that as Judaeo-Christians without
necessarily thinking that they were deserting Judaism),
then ex-Jews and their descendants constituted all
Christians existing in 175 (see Figure 1). Let me
stress immediately that I am not claiming as a fact
that 3% of Jews did convert to Christianity, or that
all Christians in 175 were ex-Jews or their descendants.
To me, each of these two estimates appears far too
high.
What I am arguing
instead is that these exemplary speculations can be
useful as exploratory devices. They illustrate the
boundaries of probability, and the reasonable derivation
of radically divergent interpretations. For example,
whatever the associative affinities between Judaism
and Christianity, and whatever the sympathetic appeal
of monotheism to both, and however distressed Jews
were after 70 at the apparent failure of God's special
relationship with Israel, we can now easily say that
most Jews stayed Jewish, or at least they did not
embrace Christianity. So Jews and their leaders could
have sensibly considered Christians as only a minor
irritation. To be sure, in some Jewish prayers, heretics
(including by implication Christians) were routinely
cursed every day; but it is by no means clear (although
mentioned by Justin) that such curses were universally
practiced by all Jewish groups in the second century.
65 Much more striking is the absence of explicit mention
of Christians in the mass of Rabbinical writings.
Or put another way, most Jews did not become Christians,
and most Jews before 300 did not obviously care about
Christianity. But complementarily, in the early period,
I suspect until about 150, most Christians were ex-Jews
or their descendants, and that is one reason why Christians
fixated on the Judaeo-Christian boundary as a major
problem. Or put crisply, Jews mattered much more for
Christians until the fourth century, than Christians
did for Jews. [End Page 216]
9.
On The Social Production of Religious Ideology
At this point I want to change tack, and investigate
the social production of religious ideology. My argument
is that the number of Christians and the number and
size of Christian cult-groups or communities, materially
influenced the style of Christian ideology. By ideology,
I mean here a system of ideas which seeks to justify
the power and authority of a set of ethical prescriptions
and metaphysical explanations, and also, of course,
to justify the power and authority of a particular
set of intepreters of these ideas. Let me proceed
by crudely contrasting Judaism and Christianity.
Christianity was different
from all religions of the Roman world. Like Judaism,
it was (or claimed to be) monotheistic. Like Judaism,
it was exclusivist, in the sense that its leaders
claimed that believers in the one true god could not,
or should not, pay homage to any other god. Unlike
Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, Christianity
was dogmatic and hierarchical; dogmatic, in the sense
that Christian leaders from early on claimed that
their own interpretation of Christian faith was the
only true interpretation of the faith, and hierarchical
in that leaders claimed legitimacy for the authority
of their interpretation from their office as priests
or bishops. "Obey your bishop," Ignatius
of Antioch ordered (allegedly in the early second
century), "so that God may heed you." 66
Admittedly, individual
Jewish leaders claimed that their own individual interpretation
of the law was right, and that other interpretations
were wrong. But systemically, at some unknown date,
Jewish rabbis seem to have come to the conclusion,
however reluctantly, that they were bound to disagree,
and that disagreement was endemic. Truth for them
(as for Roman jurists) came to lie, or was represented
as, a balance of competing opinions. Now, of course,
this systemic property of sceptical balance is a characteristic
of the system. Each individual rabbi in his own group
could be, and probably was, as dogmatic as he dared
be. But each lacked power over a large, pluralistic,
dispersed and ethnically embedded set of followers.
The balanced incapacity to enforce a single interpretative
view, and a broad acceptance of that incapacity became
a characteristic of Judaism, considered as a system,
not a characteristic necessarily of each member of
the system. 67 [End Page 217]
Christianity, by contrast,
never accepted tolerance of diverse belief as an ideal,
though of course Christians too as individuals were
often inclined or forced to accept variety in practice.
And it was this very intolerance as a defining characteristic
of Christianity which eventually made it such a useful,
if expensive, tool of state control. Christian ideologues,
from Paul onwards, repeatedly attempted to lay down
the law. Each claimed that his own interpretation
of Christian belief was right, and that any one who
disagreed was wrong, and should be excommunicated.
68
In the beginning,
leaders of the primitive church had little (or insufficient)
power to enforce their views. But the very idea that
correct belief identified the true Christian and that
incorrect belief pushed the believer who wanted to
be a Christian beyond the pale became entrenched as
a core defining characteristic of early Christianity.
By the end of the second century, leaders tried to
enhance their authority by claiming that the catholic
church had held constant and unified beliefs since
apostolic times. There was a direct line of legitimacy
stretching from God to Jesus to the apostles and from
them to bishops of the "united" orthodox
church. Christians invented, or gave unprecedented
force to the idea of orthodoxy and heresy. And as
soon as the Church gained extra power from its alliance
with the state in the fourth century, Christian leaders
persecuted those Christians whom they considered deviant
(and the boundaries shifted unpredictably) more assiduously
than pagan Romans had usually persecuted Christians.
The centrality of
correct dogma, as a defining characteristic of Christian
praxis, was a religious innovation. It arose, I think,
from the circumstances in which Christianity evolved.
Two factors seem important: first, number and dispersion,
and second, the continuously rapid rate of growth.
Let us deal with each factor in turn. Members of the
Christian church were spread in small groups all over
the Mediterranean basin. Numbers, as we have seen,
are necessarily speculative; but it seems reasonable
to imagine that in the first century or more after
its birth, [End Page 218] Christianity was typified
by having more than one hundred smallish house cult-groups
or cells, each with less than a handful of fluent
literates. Indeed, on the figures crudely proposed
in the first part of my paper, it is possible to think
that in 100, Christian ideology was the intellectual
possession of barely fifty fluent literates. It was
the tiny size of this creative body, and the small
cult-groups within and between which they worked,
which together account for the exclusivist and dogmatic
character of their self-representation. 69
In its early stages,
say during the first century and a half of its existence,
Christianity was a set of small and vulnerably fissile
cult-groups. Internally, each group may have been
held together by a demanding ethic, communal worship,
and an encouraging message of hope. And all the groups,
as a set, may have been held together by shared oral
traditions and a thin stream of beggar-missionaries.
But if Christianity was to survive over time as a
recognizable entity, some mechanism had to be found
to unify these small, scattered and volatile communities.
Writing and belief, or rather writing about belief,
became the prime instrument of unification. And the
dogmatic style of exclusivism (only my version of
the truth is acceptable) was, I argue, partly a function
of the small average size of each cell and the rarity-value
of literate leaders within each. In these circumstances,
single teachers might feel encouraged to be dogmatic.
Of course, the drive
towards unification did not succeed completely, ever.
The house cult-groups and communities were too diverse
and too diffused over different regions with their
own cultural traditions, and individual Christian
believers were too passionate and inventive for unity
ever to be achieved in reality. But the ideal and
illusion of unity as a church and as a grand (apostolic)
tradition persisted, and had a powerful effect on
Christian organization and self-representation. Christian
church leaders repeatedly tried, at least from the
middle of the third century onwards, to achieve unity
of belief and practice.
The continuous, rapid
rate of growth of Christianity, envisaged in Figure
1 (3.4% cumulative per year), implies that at any
one time about [End Page 219] two fifths of all adult
Christians had become converts, and so new members
of house cult-groups or communities, during the previous
ten years. 70 This rate of continuous growth put a
tremendous strain on the absorptive and instructional
capacity of older members. And it helps us understand
the idea, which so differentiated Christians from
pagans and Jews, that Christians were made, not born.
At any one time in the first three centuries of Christianity,
if the numbers in Figure 1 are anywhere near right,
a significantly large proportion of the adult members
of the Christian church were new members, pupils,
volunteers.
But volunteers could
both join and leave, or be ejected. So Christianity
shared with devotees of a polytheistic cult (but not
with Judaism) the possibility of temporary attendance.
But membership of pagan cult was by and large a function
of locality and performance, not belief. Pagans performed
local cult, as a matter of course, by living in a
city or village, by growing up as polytheists. They
could voluntarily opt into extra religious performances,
as the desire or need took them. In saying this, I
do not want to collude with a Christianizing distinction
between belief and behavior. Inevitably, religious
behavior consciously or unconsciously, involves mental
attitudes. Jewish thinkers and pagan ideologues expected
religious performances to be accompanied by appropriate
thoughts, such as pious reverence or purity of heart
(or at least the absence of hate). 71
Christian leaders
too expected this internal piety from their followers.
But, in addition, they expected and exacted formal
commitment to specific beliefs about Jesus' godhead
and redeemership, and their own hopes of salvific
redemption and immortality. This demand constituted
a radical break from both Judaism and polytheism.
Why? Two explanations seem important, one genetic
(in the Genesis sense), the other functional.
Genetically, Christian
leaders' fixation on their common beliefs arose from
their extraordinary nature: Jesus was both human and
divine, he suffered death to save humanity; by believing
in him as the son of God, [End Page 220] we will be
saved. By both Jewish and pagan standards, this message
was extraordinary. No wonder it played a crucial role
in Christians' self-definition. Functionally, concentration
on formal statements of belief made it much easier
to join communities spread around the Mediterranean.
A simple test (do you believe x and y?) could be administered,
and their justifications could be elaborated, by letter.
The dispersed and vagrant leadership of the primitive
church could maintain the illusion of homogeneity
through writing about their beliefs. Of course, it
took some time to decide exactly what the identifying
beliefs were (the creed was not formalized until the
fourth century), and what the test of belonging should
be, or how it should be administered. But the innovative
principle that their religion was founded on a shared
belief (rather than, or as well as on, a shared practice)
remained constant for centuries.
Concentration on belief
rather than on practice originated in part as a device
for differentiating Christians from Jews, just as
Sunday and Sabbath differentiated them (though both
sects remained similarly distinctive in the Roman
world, by having a weekly holy day). But functionally
speaking, belief statements were an economy travel-package,
so much more easily transportable between widely dispersed,
fast growing and freshly established cult-groups,
than detailed rules of legal observance which needed
a solid body of long-time practitioners to socialize
new adherents. Simple capsules of Christian belief
statements could be so much more easily absorbed by
a constant flood of new recruits than complex rules
of daily life or even of liturgical practice. Or put
another way, it was much simpler to learn how to be
a Christian, than to learn how to be a Jew. And we
must remember that according to the crude numbers
outlined in Figure 1, 40% of the adult members of
any Christian community had become new members in
the previous decade. Christianity was a religion which,
because of the rapidity of its expansion, always had
to be questioning its members about the nature and
degree of their adherence.
This strategy of privileging
belief over practice carried high risks. The high
risks arose from the need to maintain coherence by
expelling (or threatening to expel) deviants. Expulsion
or the threat of expulsion seriously increased the
risk and incidence of heresy and schism. I don't think
that anyone in the middle of the second century could
have reasonably predicted that the policy of dogmatic
exclusivism would end up with a triumphant monopoly.
The success of the strategy was discovered only over
time; it was not purposively invented as a marketing
device. Yet, in balance, the costs of maintaining
orthodoxy were mitigated, especially in small groups,
by the advantages of inculcating [End Page 221] a
heightened sense among the survivors, that they were
the sole inheritors, and the correct propagators of
the one true Christian message. And in the medium
term, concentration on belief allowed a constant elaboration
and sophistication of what these beliefs implied,
and how they fitted in with each other. This elaboration
of belief, which we call theology, allowed a gradual
rapprochement between Christian leaders and pagan
philosophy. And this gradual rapprochement gave the
Christian message a socially acceptable veneer. Sophisticated
elaboration of Christian ideology also allowed or
even encouraged an internal differentiation among
the Christian faithful, so that ideological specialists
could gain symbolic capital, material rewards and
ecclesiastical power from their intellectual proficiencies.
For all its pretentions at universality, Christianity
particularly rewarded its elite; indeed, such differential
rewards were a necessary part in Christianity's political
success and influence.
10.
The Implications of Mass Conversion
Rapid growth in the absolute numbers of Christians
occurred only in the third and fourth centuries. According
to the estimated numbers in Figure 1, there was an
increase of about one million Christians in the first
half of the third century, and of five million new
Christians in the second half of the third century,
thirty million plus in the fourth century. From such
figures, it becomes easier to judge the scale of what
church historians often claim for the growth of Christianity.
The problems of internal adjustment, and the cumulative
impact of paganism on Christian practice, must have
been tremendous. But for the moment, let us put scepticism
aside. Let us assume that the straight growth line
is roughly right. 72
Now we can see that
it was only in the third century, when the number
of Christians grew from say 220,000 to over six million,
that the church gained the resources and numbers to
justify building churches devoted to meetings. And
in most towns, it was only then that internal differentiation
evolved to a degree which could maintain a hierarchy
of bishops and priests, working exclusively as priests,
and supported by the contributions of the faithful.
[End Page 222]
But the increase in
numbers brought its own troubles. Visibility and bulk
provoked the first serious attempts by the central
Roman government to destroy Christianity in 250-51,
257-60 and after 303. And amazingly, if these growth
figures are anywhere near right, then the persecutions
or contemporary conditions (civil wars, barbarian
invasions, rampant inflation, repeated plagues, urban
decline), or their combination, encouraged an unprecedented
growth in the numbers of Christians. Success in achieving
growth also prompted a battle royal among Christians
themselves, between the traditional rigorists who
wanted to maintain the old ways of the devoted small
community, and the laxists, who wanted growth in numbers,
even if that meant sacrificing moral standards.
The conversion of
the emperor Constantine, the continued Christianity
of his successors and the alliance of the church triumphant
with the Roman state brought about a still more dramatic
increase, of say thirty million people, in the membership
of the church during the fourth century. But by then,
for most people being a Christian must have meant
something quite different from what it had meant in
the first three centuries c.e., and the nature of
some conversions may have been, must have been, superficial.
The utility of the
Christian church to the state was, I imagine, discovered
only over time, by Constantine and his successors.
It was not necessarily foreseen by any one of them.
But it is worth noting that successive Sassanian kings
towards the end of the third century moved the Iranian
empire towards religious (Mazdaean) exclusivism and
the systematic persecution of religious "deviants."
73 It seems that the two rival and hostile empires,
Iran and Rome, were moving along a similar path at
roughly the same time. Was it because both empires
needed a greater degree of symbolic unity in order
to squeeze greater resources from their subjects?
In the long-run, Christianity
gave to the Roman state a degree of symbolic unity
and exploitable loyalty, which it had previously lacked.
Christianity had more combinatory power and more power
to demand self-sacrifice than the previous combination
of localized polytheisms, [End Page 223] vague henotheism,
and emperor cult. Christian rulers and their henchmen
now had the legitimacy and authority of a powerful
and interventionist God to support their authority
and the enforcement of state regulations. The Roman
state endorsed and then borrowed Christian intolerance.
In the medium-term,
a unified religion helped the Roman state to secure
the self-sacrifice required of both soldiers and tax-payers.
Sacrifice, so their leaders said, was demanded by
God. The Christian religion became, in other words,
a supplementary weapon of political and social control,
used alongside law, violence and taxation. Christianity
also helped provide a cohesiveness of religious discourse
among enthusiasts, which, rather like political discourse
in modern developed states, bound competitors together
via their minor differences. One advantage of religious
over political discourse was that, at least overtly,
enthusiasts were not discussing the redistribution
of resources (always a tricky issue in a pre-industrial
society with a limited disposable surplus), but the
irresolvable issues of the nature of God or of life
after death.
One significant short-term
advantage of switching to Christianity as the state
religion lay in the possibility it opened up to pillage
the stored reserves of pagan temples. Only one source,
the fifth-century church historian Sozomen, states
that Constantine took money from pagan temples. 74
But it is difficult to envisage how Constantine managed
to find the huge sums needed to found the new capital
of Constantinople without using the funds of the temples,
which increasingly over the next sixty years were
destroyed. Christianity also allowed successive emperors
to switch patronage from an over-privileged traditional
aristocracy to fresh swathes of often newly Christianized
supporters.
The disadvantages
of Christianity, from a political point of view, lay
mainly in transition costs, in the alienation of the
conservative and pagan upper-classes, and in the difficulty
of effecting a thorough-going mass conversion. The
superficiality of Christianization in broad areas
of the Roman world was revealed only three centuries
later, when Islam swept triumphantly through exactly
those regions where it is alleged Christianity first
took deepest root. The church was also prone to zealous
schism and dissent. The combination of alienation,
superficiality and division meant that the church
could not always deliver to the state the political
loyalty of its putative believers. It has also been
argued that the Christian church was itself expensive
to the state in tax-immunities, diversion of [End
Page 224] ability, and non-productive life-styles,
particularly at a time when the empire was desperately
trying to defend itself against barbarian incursions.
There may be something in these arguments, but the
survival of the eastern empire, for close on a thousand
years after the conversion of Constantine, indicates
that the internal costs of religion were not excessive.
11.
Summary
In this paper, I have experimented with estimating
the number of Christians at successive stages of Christian
evolution. The figures are necessarily speculative,
but nevertheless can usefully serve as a framework
against which to test alternatives and implications.
I have come to five main conclusions. First, the number
of Christians expanded fast, but for a long time remained
tiny relative to the total population of the empire.
The disparity between number and proportion helped
produce two different but complementary accounts;
Christians thought of themselves as successful but
persecuted, while leading Romans long remained ignorant
of their activities. Stories about persecution, rather
more than persecution itself, were an important factor
in Christian self-representation and togetherness.
Secondly, Christian
house cult-groups in the first century after Jesus'
death were on average both small and dispersed. The
small size of the groups helped maintain enthusiastic
vigor and ethical rigor among converts. The rapid
growth and expansion of the religion depended upon
the creation of an easily administrable test of membership,
encapsulated in brief statements of belief. This emphasis
on belief combined with ethical practice was a significant
religious innovation. It was, I argue, a function
of dispersion, small numbers and rapid growth.
Thirdly, given general
rates of literacy among the Roman population, and
even allowing for somewhat higher rates among Christian
converts, it seems likely that the development and
maintenance of Christian religious ideology in the
first century after Jesus' death was at any one time
the intellectual property of only a few dozen men,
scattered throughout the Mediterranean basin. The
maintenance of identity between groups depended therefore
upon writing, and particularly upon the writing of
letters. The smallness of the group of educated devotees
helped give early Christianity its intense internalized
character.
Fourthly, the number
of Jews was very large compared with the number of
Christians, at least until the late third century.
Because enthusiastic cult-groups, according to modern
evidence, expand usually [End Page 225] along family
and social networks, i.e., among relatives and friends,
it seems likely that Jews were the main early customers
for conversion to Christianity. But differences in
experience between Christians and Jews (as between
Christians and Romans) helped generate complementary,
but contrasting accounts. In the early days, most
Christians were ex-Jews or their descendants. So Christians,
at least until the completion of the New Testament
texts (roughly speaking, the middle of the second
century), were preoccupied with their relationship
to Judaism. But Jews, the vast mass of whom remained
immune to Christianity, for a long time largely ignored
the existence of what was for them a marginal group.
This discrepancy of experience helps explain why Christians
continued to use the Jewish bible as their main authenticating
text. The main focus of Christian expansion moved
to the gentiles only during the second century. This
change of focus perhaps helps explain why the letters
of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, both of which
celebrate the mission to the gentiles, were finally
included in the canonical New Testament.
Finally, the greatest
surge in Christian numbers (in absolute terms) occurred
in two stages, in the third century and fourth centuries.
Surprisingly, the first mass, centrally organized
and reputedly severe persecutions coincided with considerable
Christian growth. In terms of number, persecutions
helped Christianity. And then the mass of Christian
conversions, which followed the alliance of the Christian
church with the Roman state under Constantine and
his Christian successors was on a huge scale, and
was sufficient significantly to change the nature
of Christian practice. It is customary to consider
Constantine's conversion and adoption of Christianity
as a state-favored religion, in terms of his personal
sincerity or his perception of Roman interests. It
is extremely interesting that Iran, Rome's most powerful
enemy, had gone along the same road of trying to create
an exclusive monopoly of state religion, barely thirty
years before Constantine's conversion.
Keith Hopkins
is Professor of Ancient History at King's College,
Cambridge.
*My warm thanks
for encouragement, help and advice to Jaime Alvar,
Mary Beard, Keith Carne, Elizabeth Clark, Simon Goldhill,
Christopher Kelly, Seth Schwartz, and to this journal's
anonymous reader.
Notes
1. A similar tactic
is used by Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity
(Princeton, 1996), 4ff. I found his book suggestive,
helpful and provocative. My debt to his thinking pervades
this article, though I differ from him in emphases
and interpretation.
2. This opposition
between what we could call interpretative or reflexive
understanding and critical path analysis is sometimes
conceptualized as being between soft history and hard
sociology. But history and sociology, are each immensely
diverse. Besides, I prefer to think of them as complementary,
with many overlaps of concept and practice. That said,
I should stress that my arguments in this article
are predominantly of the "suppose if"/parametric
probability kind.
3. I take it for granted
that membership of voluntary associations fluctuates;
how could it not? For historical illustration, see
the excellent analysis of Shakers, Mormons and the
Oneida community by L. Foster, Religion and Sexuality
(New York, 1981).
4. Epiphanius, Panarion;
Augustine, De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum, Philastrius,
Diversarum hereseon liber, to say nothing of the other
heresiologists, such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who
celebrated Christian centripetality and diversity.
5. Adolph von Harnack,
Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den
ersten drei Jahrhunderten, fourth edition (Leipzig,
1924); English translation of the second edition,
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First
Three Centuries (London, 1908). This is still an indispensable
discussion of the surviving testimony.
6. In a similar vein,
the British princess Margaret, returning from a holiday
in the West Indies, is reported to have said that
she had had a wonderful time: "Absolutely no
one was there."
7. Letters 10, 96-97,
dated about 112. For a glimpse into the enormous literature
on this correspondence, see A. N. Sherwin-White, The
Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1966), 691ff. Tacitus' account
of the persecution of Christians under Nero was written
a few years later.
8. G. E. M. de Ste
Croix in a justly famous article, "Why were the
early Christians persecuted?" Past and Present
26 (1963): 6-38, reprinted in M. I. Finley, ed., Studies
in Ancient Society (London, 1974), 210ff., argued
that being called a Christian (technically the nomen
christianum) was a sufficient criminal charge against
early Christians. Sherwin-White argued less convincingly
(ibidem, 250ff.) that it was the early Christians'
obstinacy, mentioned in Pliny's letter (10.96) which
ensured their persecution. In my opinion, de Ste Croix's
superior advocacy (ibidem 256ff.) has unjustly obscured
the nature of the problem. Both were partly right,
though answering different questions. The first answer
is to the question: on what formal charge were Christians
prosecuted? The second is an incomplete answer to
the more general social question: why were Christians
prosecuted/condemned?
9. Justin, 1 apol.
3-4; Athenagoras, leg. 1-2; Tertullian, apol. 1-2.
10. See R. G. Collingwood's
brilliant An Autobiography (Oxford, 1939), 79ff.,
for a long-unheeded but still all too relevant criticism
of ancient history's "scissors-and-paste men,"
and the criteria for using evidence.
11. Harnack, Mission
und Ausbreitung, 946ff.; Mission and Expansion, 2:324ff.
The influential footnote which contains a confusing
misprint is found at p. 807 and 2:248 respectively.
12. Stark, Rise of
Christianity, 6, for several modern estimates.
13. On the tactics
of model-construction in Roman history, see K. Hopkins,
"Rome, Taxes, Rent and Trade," Kodai 5/6
(1995/6): 41ff.
14. Following Stark,
Rise of Christianity, 5.
15. It is quite possible
to think of implications without knowing the exact
size of the Christian population. But that is why
so many of my arguments here have the form "if
x then y," or "the more x the more (or less)
probable y is." For example, if Christians usually
met in private houses, and if regular attendance was
a condition of being Christian, then the more Christians
there were, the more house cult-groups there were.
16. This graph is
a reexpression of the illustrative figures given by
Stark, Rise of Christianity, 7. One advantage of a
graph is that it is easy to see the crudity of the
linear assumption, and to read off interstitial numbers.
17. These are rounded
up versions of the precise numbers given by Stark,
ibid., 7 with a couple of additions. Note: they are
guesstimates, not facts.
18. See, for example,
on mass desertions from Christianity in the persecutions
under Decius, Cyprian, De lapsis 7-9, and Dionysius
of Alexandria in Eusebius, h.e. 6.41.11-12; on sacrifice
by the bishop of Smyrna, see Acta Pionii 15. Even
so, the overall number of Christians increased in
the same general period.
19. Cf. Stark, Rise
of Christianity, 7. It's worth emphasizing that no
one knows the size of the population of the Roman
empire. Estimates vary, though most scholars by convention
use 50-60 million as plausible middling figures, following
in the track of K. J. Beloch, Die Bevoelkerung der
griechisch-roemischen Welt (Leipzig, 1886), 507, who
estimated the total population in c.e. 14 as 54 million.
For a modern view, see B. Frier, Cambridge Ancient
History, vol. 11/2 (Cambridge, 1998). He argues plausibly
that the population of the Roman empire grew in the
first and second centuries c.e. If so, then all my
proportional arguments hold a fortiori.
20. This calculation
is based on a very rough estimate. Let us say that
the population of the eastern half of the Roman empire,
more urbanized than the west, was 35 million out of
the 60 million total population. Let us say the urbanized
population there was 15% or 5.25 million, which includes
the large cities of Antioch and Alexandria. And as
our present problem is the visibility of Christians
in towns and cities, we should include Carthage and
Rome in our calculations. So in total, we have to
reckon say 220,000 Christians in 200 as a proportion
of (urbanites in the eastern Mediterranean, plus Rome
and Carthage) say 6.4 million = 3.4%. But according
to Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, h.e. 7.24.6,
Christianity did spread to villages in Egypt.
21. For example, 2
Clem. 2.6 states that Christians were more numerous
than Jews (but see section 8 below); Tertullian claims
that Christianity has spread widely geographically,
and socially upwards: "we have filled cities
. . . villages, towns . . . town-councils, palace,
senate, forum, leaving only the temples to you"
(Apol. 2).
22. It is obviously
risky to use Christian apologetics or martyr acts
to portray relations between Roman provincial governors
and Christian leaders, since what we have are Christian
self-representations, not official accounts of trials.
For the considerable difference between surviving
court records of trials from Roman Egypt and martyr
acts, see the convincing account by G. A. Bisbee,
Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii (Philadelphia,
1988), esp. 33ff. That said, Roman irritation with
rather than anger against Christians comes out for
example in Tertullian, ad Scapulam 4-5.
23. On persecutions,
see the full but credulous account by W. H. C. Frend,
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford,
1965), and with flair, A. J. Droge and J. D. Tabor,
A Noble Death (San Francisco, 1992). On Jews as an
alleged source of persecution, see, for example, Justin,
Dialogue wth Trypho 16: "You are powerless to
lay hands on us, because of our overlords [the Romans],
but you have done so whenever the opportunity arose
. . ." and Tertullian: "the synagogues of
the Jews are the cause of our persecution" (Scorpiace
10).
24. Individual martyrs
became a special Christian type of hero, with power,
so some believed, to forgive sins, even in this world
(much to the controlled indignation of bishop Cyprian,
Letters 15-20). Contrarily, though it was not the
winning position, some Christians thought that voluntary
martyrdom was as futile as the suicide of an Indian
fakir, and that real martyrdom was to be sought in
daily life (Clem. Alex., strom. 4.4.17, 2.20.104).
25. By modern scholarly
convention, Jews rebelled, but Christians were persecuted.
Statistically, Jews for a long time had more to complain
about. For oppression in Antioch, see Josephus, bj
7.46ff. and 103; in Alexandria, Philo, in Flaccum
55ff. On the long anti-Jewish prejudice in Alexandria,
see H. Musurillo, ed., Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford,
1954).
26. For example, repeatedly
making the sign of the cross on the forehead, and
not wearing or decorating door-posts with wreaths
during festivals (in so far as Christians actually
behaved openly as their leaders told them) must have
set them apart (Tertullian, De corona 3 and 10).
27. Christian apologists
in the second and third centuries (from Justin to
Minucius Felix and Origen) preserve Christian versions
of the (powerful) attacks, which pagans made against
them. It would be foolish to assume that these rationalized
arguments were the only criticisms popularly made
against the Christians. For all their overt appearance
as documents addressed to emperors and educated pagans,
it would take a very patient pagan to read them. They
are aimed at Christians, and celebrate Christian difference.
28. On the internal
divisions within Paul's group at Corinth (I Cor 11.17ff.),
see, for example, G. Theissen, The Social Setting
of Pauline Christianity (Edinburgh, 1982), 145ff.
29. For warnings against
false teachers, who want to stay in a house cult-group
for more than three days without working, and who
ask for money as well as food, see Did. 11-12. The
notion of false prophets haunts the dispersed early
Christian groups. How can they tell?
30. Harnack, Mission
und Ausbreitung, 618ff.; Mission and Expansion, 2:89-96.
See also Y. Aharoni and M. Avi-Yonah, The Macmillan
Bible Atlas (New York, 1977), 166-67.
31. L. M. White, Building
God's House in the Roman World (Baltimore, 1990),
especially 105; he notes that there were in Paul's
time six houses in Corinth used for meetings by Christians.
32. Palestinian Talmud,
Kilayim 9.4.32b and Shabbat 6.8a. These passages may
reflect fourth-century, not second-century conditions;
but for my current purposes that does not matter.
The principle I want to establish is that if attendance
was a condition of membership in a religion, then
the larger the town, the more meeting places you needed,
even for a licit religion, a fortiori for an illicit
one.
33. Harnack, Mission
und Ausbreitung, 618ff.; Mission and Expansion, 2:
89-96. I may seem to be being a bit unfair to Harnack,
since his agenda was to establish what can be known/proved
about Christian expansion. The trouble is that positivist
followers translate known into all.
34. Ibid.
35. According to Eusebius
(h.e. 6.43.11), the church at Rome in 251 supported
46 priests, over a hundred lesser clergy and employees,
plus 1500 widows and beggars. Harnack (ibid., 806;
2:247) guessed that there needed to be at least 30,000
Christians at Rome to support that number of clergy
and dependents.
36. This is and can
be only a very rough order of magnitude. There are
two problems, our ignorance and the arbitrariness
of the boundary which divides a town from a village,
not notionally (town-council, baths, acknowledged
status), but in fact. All that said, I think 2000
is about right. For the testimony on which this is
based, see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire
(Oxford, 1964), 712ff.
37. On the relatively
late coming out of Christians (at the end of the second,
early third century), see, for example, P. Lampe,
Die stadtroemische Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten
(Tubingen, 1989), 13ff. On the earliest, archaeologically
known church, an unobtrusive, mud-brick refurbished
house, no longer used as a residence, built in about
230, converted to church use about ten years before
its destruction in 256 (its assembly hall held 65-75
people), see C. H. Kraeling, Excavations at Dura-Europus,
8.2 (New Haven, 1932), 3, 19 and 37.
38. On the building
of large churches, see Porphyry (died c. 305) cited
by Macarius Magnes, 4.21.
39. See A. J. Coale
and P. Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables (Princeton,
1966), table West, level 3, stationary population.
To be unnecessarily precise, children aged 0-17 constituted
31.9% of the total population, adult males 28.6%,
and adult females 31.9%. Mortality of adult females
was lower than of males. The sex ratio from Roman
Egyptian census returns is in the region of 108:100
m:f; see R. Bagnall and B. Frier, The Demography of
Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 1994), 95.
40. On the appeal
of Christianity to women and children, see Celsus
in Origen, Cels. 3.55; on the preponderance of women
among Christians, see Council of Elvira, canon 15,
and for a collection of testimony, Harnack, Mission
and Expansion, 2:64ff. Stark (Rise of Christianity,
95ff.) in his chapter on Christian women indicates
that in modern proselytizing religious movements,
women are primary converts. But in treating ancient
evidence, I think he too readily equates prescription
with performance, and single instances with general
patterns of behavior. See also J. Bremmer, "Why
Did Early Christianity Attract Upper Class-Women?"
Instrumenta Patristica 19 (1989): 36ff.; the answer
must surely be that before the fourth century, it
did not attract many (proportionately), and the stress
on their membership which we find in Christian sources
arises precisely from women's social visibility and
rarity.
41. See L. R. Iannaccone,
"Religious Practice," Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religions 29 (1990): 301-2; Stark, Rise of
Christianity, 15ff. In my view, preferential female
recruitment in Roman conditions was probably more
a rhetorical figment than a statement of general fact.
And its impact was less in an ancient society, suffering
high mortality, than it would be in a modern society,
enjoying lower mortality. In the Roman world, if,
exempli causa, all recruitment was among young adults,
of whom 75% were female and prior to the birth of
their first surviving child, and 25% male at a similar
age, then, if all the children of Christians became
Christian, the sex ratio in the total body of Christians,
growing at a constant 3.4% per year, would be 40%
male, 60% female (Stark, p. 101, miscalculated by
omitting children). But among adults, because of the
high constant rate of recruitment, the ratio would
be 33% male, 67% female. In a typical community, therefore,
in 100 there would be only 13 adult males and 27 adult
females, plus 30 children. This would have caused
difficulties. I conclude therefore that differential
recruitment was not as great as 25:75 m:f. Do other
people argue like this?
42. Natural increase
(excluding migration) in a pre-industrial population
before the demographic revolution is unlikely to persist
for a long period at above 1% per annum. The growth
of Christians posited at 3.4% per annum compounded
by the numbers in Figure 1 may therefore be made up
by ca. 1% p.a. natural increase (allowing for the
extra fertility of young adult recruits), plus ca.
2.4% p.a. increase via conversions.
43. Augustine tells
the story of how Manichees at Rome, a prohibited sect
in the late fourth century, were reluctant to enforce
discipline against miscreant electi, because of the
fear that any disgruntled member might report them
to the Roman authorities (De moribus manich. 69).
Similar forces must have been at work in the early
Christian church.
44. William V. Harris,
Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 175ff.,
272 and 323ff.
45. There was some
crossover between urban and rural populations, in
the sense that some people living in towns worked
in fields outside towns, and some (a significant minority)
of those living in villages were artisans, either
full- or part-time, or engaged in other non-agricultural
occupations (e.g., priests, scribes, tax-collectors,
traders).
46. The income of
Pliny the Younger is estimated at 1.1 million HS by
R. P. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire
(Cambridge, 1982), 21. Subsistence is crudely reckoned
at about 250 kg wheat equivalent per person/year,
so that an average family of four persons would need
1 metric ton wheat equivalent, roughly 150 modii at
3 HS per modius.
47. W. A. Meeks, The
First Urban Christians (New Haven, 1983), 72ff.
48. Any such calculation
must be vague, since there was/is no single valid
definition of Roman ruling strata. But if we combine
senators, knights, and town councillors (100 for each
of 2000 towns), we get a total of say 210,000 adult
males (i.e., 1.2%) out of 17 million adult males in
the empire. I use adult males as a unit of calculation
for convenience. In fact, some towns did not have
as many as 100 town councillors, and their wealth
differed dramatically according to the size and wealth
of the town.
49. In the third millennium
b.c.e. in Egypt, less than 1% of adult males had been
literate, according to C. G. Eyre and J. Baines, "Four
Notes on Literacy," Goettinger Miszellen 61 (1983):
65ff. In the rest of the Mediterranean basin, presumably,
literacy rates were as low or lower until very much
later.
50. Since not all
town councillors (or even bishops) could write, let
alone rank as sophisticated literates, this estimate
seems overgenerous.
51. Cf. James 2.5:
"Listen, my beloved brethren. Has not God chosen
those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith
and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to
those who love him? . . . Is it not the rich who oppress
you, is it not they who drag you to court?"
52. Origen, Cels.
3.44 and 55. This traditional view has been criticized,
for example, by E. A. Judge, The Social Pattern of
Christian Groups in the First Century (London, 1960),
52ff., and Meeks, Urban Christians, 51ff.
53. Origen, Cels.
1.27: "among the great number of people"
converted to Christianity, "because there are
many more vulgar illiterates than educated rational
thinkers, it is inevitable that the uneducated should
outnumber the more intelligent." Needless to
say I cite this extract, not as proof, but as illustration.
So too Tertullian's dictum that most Christians were
simple and uneducated (Against Praxeas 3).
54. Of course, Justin,
Tertullian, Clement, and Origen, are dressing Christian
arguments in increasingly well-educated clothes, but
the appeal to simplicity, poverty and charity, remains
and persists as a rhetorical figure and as a spur
to action. See P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late
Antiquity (Madison, 1992).
55. The (later to
be) canonical gospels long circulated separately,
not as a set of four, and since they were not canonical,
nor regularly cited by Christian writers until the
middle of the second century, there was no particular
reason why Christian communities should get copies,
indeed if they knew of their collective existence.
A case in point are the Marcionite prefaces to the
Pauline epistles, written in the mid-second century,
but found in a major set of Latin vulgate manuscripts;
their adoption indicates that western Christian communities
did not receive a text of the Pauline letters until
after the mid-second century, and/or were indifferent
to their heretical introductions. See D. de Bruyne,
"Prologues bibliques d'origine marcionite,"
Rev. bened. 24 (1907): 1ff. and esp. 11ff.
56. On parental obligations,
see Josephus, Against Apion 2.204; Antiquities 4.211.
On ubiquitous schools, see Palestinian Talmud, Megillah
3.73d; Ketuboth 13.35c; Taanith 4.69a. See the good
discussion on these points by Harry Y. Gamble, Books
and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, 1995),
6ff.
57. Now that we know
the implications of the reasoning, some critical or
precommitted readers may want to question it again.
But as I see it, the room for maneuver is constricted.
Either primitive Christians were recruited more than
anyone has suspected from the sophisticated literate
sub-elites, or these sub-elites constituted a much
larger proportion of the Roman urban population than
anyone has suspected, or there were many more Christians
than the 7000 estimated for 100.
58. With Tertullian,
Clement and Origen, Christian writing showed overt
ambition and some success in clothing itself like
pagan classical culture. See, for example, C. Bigg,
The Christian Platonists of Alexandria (Oxford, 1913);
H. Chadwick, Early Christianity and the Classical
Tradition (Oxford, 1966); and E. A. Clark, Clement's
Use of Aristotle (New York, 1977).
59. Reported by M.
Simon, Verus Israel (London, 1996), 33-34, who in
turn depended mainly on Juster, Les juifs dans l'empire
romain (Paris, 1914), 1:180-209.
60. M. Broshi, "The
Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine
Period," BASOR 236 (1979): 1ff.
61. II Baruch (like
IV Ezra) celebrates the despair felt by some Jews
after the destruction of Jerusalem; although the author
finishes by reaffirming his trust in God and the Law,
and the hope of eventual revenge, he also acknowledged
that some Jews had deserted (41.3: "Behold, I
see many of your people who separated themselves from
your Law"; 85.3: "we have nothing now apart
from the Mighty One and his Law. Therefore, if we
direct and dispose our hearts, we shall receive everything
which we lost again by many times"). In the rebellion
of Bar Kokhba, Jews who had had their foreskins surgically
restored, presumably in order to take part nude in
hellenistic civic life, were forcibly recircumcised
(Palestinian Talmud, Shabbat 15[16].9). To not much
avail, at the end of the second century, the Jewish
cities of Sepphoris and Lydda, for example, changed
their names to Diocaesarea and Diospolis (Zeustown).
62. Luke/Acts records
repeated visits by Paul to synagogues in different
towns, where he taught his message to Jews and persuaded
many of them. Of course, Acts is not a work of accurate
history (whatever that is), but a doctrinal tract
with a message. Even when it was written, towards
the end of the first century, the appeal of Christianity
to Jews, and the break from Judaism, was central to
Luke's perception of Christian evolution, and I suspect,
of contemporary Christian preoccupations. See very
helpfully on Acts' historicity, R. I. Pervo, Profit
with Delight (Philadelphia, 1987).
63. Stark, Rise of
Christianity, 16.
64. See, for example,
Acts 3-4.4, Acts of Andrew 1, Acts of John 18ff.,
Acts of Peter 27, Acts of Thomas 23-24, 31-38. R.
Macmullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven,
1984) considers miracles central to Christian expansion.
But I'm not sure that Romans "took miracles quite
for granted. That was the general starting point"
(22).
65. I take seriously
Justin's clear and repeated statement that Jews cursed
Christians (dial. 16.4; 93.4; 95.4; 96.2; 108.3; 123.6;
133.6; 137.2). But the issue is complicated; see W.
Horbury, "The Benediction of the Minim and Early
Jewish Controversy," JTS 33 (1982): 19ff., and
P. W. van der Horst, Hellenism-Judaism-Christianity
(Kampen, 1994), 99ff.
66. Ignatius, Polyc.
6; cf. Smyrn. 8 and Philad. 7.
67. My favorite text,
illustrating (to me) the balance of disagreements
among rabbis, and describing the excommunication of
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, is Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezia
59a-b; the structure of the text is made more evident
in the translation by J. Neusner, Bava Mesia (Atlanta,
1990), 154-56. The same story, but with important
variants, is told in the Palestinian Talmud, Mo'ed
Qatan 3.1.
68. Perhaps this is
overdramatic and overstated; perhaps reconciliation
and tolerance of differences, which certainly occurred,
leave less trace in the sources, or are less remarkable.
All that said, the hostility between early Christian
sectarians is notable, a symptom of their commitment.
Examples are II Cor 6.14 (interpolated?); Col 2.8;
Eph 4.14; I Jn 2.18; II Jn 7-8; Rev 2.6.
69. I hope this does
not sound too reductionist. I am thinking here not
that the small size of house cult-groups, their dispersion,
and the scarcity of sophisticated literates in the
early church created the importance of dogma, rather
that perhaps these were the main factors which preserved
and enhanced the importance of dogma. Perhaps also
the importance of dogma, or of explicit belief statements,
as a criterion of sect membership, is itself a figment
of the surviving literary sources: sophisticated literates
stressed belief, stalwart practicing Christians stressed
practice. I suspect truth lies in their combination.
70. This is a bit
complex to work out, and depends on several assumptions,
such as the age of the new converts, whether before
or after marriage, and the age distribution of preexisting
members, as well as on their respective fertility.
On reasonable (but not necessarily true) assumptions,
exempli causa, if all converts were young adults,
and older and new converts had similar fertility,
then those converted within the previous ten years
constituted about 40% of adult Christians, but only
a quarter of all Christians including children.
71. S. J. D. Cohen,
From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia, 1987),
esp. 66ff.
72. Of course, I do
not mean by this that straight line growth is an accurate
description of what happened; it is merely the easiest?
best? most economical way of thinking about Christian
growth; it is a first approximation, which elicits
correspondingly simple, structural implications and
further thought.
73. The (attempted)
religious unification of Iran by the high priest Kartir
under four successive third-century Iranian kings
is recorded in four autobiographical inscriptions,
three of which are transcribed and translated with
learned commentary by M. Sprengling, Third Century
Iran, Sapor and Kartir (Chicago, 1953). The fourth
Kartir text is given by P. Gignoux, "L'inscription
de Kartir a Sar Mashad," Journal Asiatique 256
(1968): 390ff.
74. Sozomen, h.e.
2. 5.